RØSENKØPF

Sunday, June 17, 2012

My friend Mike Ciazzo has alerted me that my use of commas has been abusive. I have no experience in writing or expressing my thoughts in text besides my lyric writing which can be slightly ogreish and minimal so any criticisms are appreciated. With that said we just played 3 shows in Sacramento, San Francisco and Oakland. I guess I've sort of been slacking on updating this thing but I try to wait until I feel I've gained a whole experience from a place or places before I write an entry. Sometimes a whole experience is achieved after one show. Usually it seems it's been about every two shows. in this case I guess it took 3 shows and 4 days to feel like I somewhat have a grasp on the bay area. I was very excited to go to the bay because most people I know that come to new York from there like to act like there is some sort of rivalry between NY and SF. I guess there are legitimate reasons to feel that way but now having gone there I find it really funny because they are so similar to me. I think it was the similar feel to NY that threw me off at first. I've really been enjoying being in smaller towns/ city's, so when we first arrived to the mission in SF it was was a bit overwhelming and for the first time i could understand why anybody would choose to live outside of a city. To be honest I was a little sad that we were about to spend 3 days here with that first day being a day off with no show and nothing to do. I don't think it was the actual fact of san francisco that was bumming me out as much as it was just feeling lost in such an urban setting. I've found it very exciting to be in these smaller towns, not knowing anyone or anything But being in SF sort of felt just like being in NY except nothing was familiar, as if I was lost in my hometown. Kind of like in a dream when you see A close friend but they look completely different, yet somehow you still know its them. Maybe I'm being overly dramatic cause this fucking heat is frying my brain, but whatever. Anyway, I guess I should actually talk about the shows? Sacramento was set up by our friend Marilyn, who's sister Jen currently lives in NY but was out there for the summer. It was nice to see familiar faces and also nice that it was our first house show of the tour. We played with a band called Crimson Scarlette who I was excited to see because we had heard good things about them from multiple sources.The show went good but As much as I love playing in punk basements, I'm not sure were really as effective in such a setting. We take up a lot of space with all our gear and I need room to move bak and forth from the mic and the synth/ drum machines. The basement, while having a great vibe to it, was just a bit too small. Playing was kind of like running through an obstacle course having to duck my head down to dodge a pipe everytime I needed to get to the electronics and the space was so shallow that I was basically screaming at a wall. We pulled it off though and like an obstacle course is meant to do, we are hopefully improved because of it.
Two days later we played with crimson Scarlette again in SF at a club called retox. I was glad we got to see them again because their drum machine wasn't loud enough at the first show (a problem we empathize with) but they defenitely killed it at this second one. Third show was in Oakland at a long standing noise venue called TERMINAL ran by Ryan from Deathroes. Most of the people i asked about the venue the previous night had either never heard of it or had heard of it but never been there so i had no clue what to expect.The show was with Altar De Fey, an 80s death rock band that just recently started playing again. I'm not usually one for reunions, but this seemed very humble and I was glad to be playing with them.
Terminal turned out to be a pretty awesome one room DIY space with a huge wall-of-amps sound system and beat up velvet couches. It's got a lot of history and you can feel it.
Driving to LA now to play at the echo. The heat in the van is fucking killing me ughhhhhhhgggh I can't write anymore

Photos: some of the speakers at TERMINAL, us at the coast, altar de fey

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Eureka was way more interesting than I think any of us expected. Having know clue about any bands or music coming from eureka, I contacted a friend of mine, mark bronzino, who has toured many times and been all over the states, to find out if he knew anything about what it was like here. He replied that in his professional opinion, the town was "mad crust". This would have been fine, we have actually played with a surprising amount of "crust" or "crust friendly" bands on this tour, but I was pleasantly surprised when we showed up to the venue and heard blaring synth noise, drum machines and screams, echoing out of the warehouse/gallery space. I was a little disappointed when I walked in and saw that it was just a kid in the corner of the room screaming into a microphone with all the music being backtracked on an iPod, but It still sounded good so I was psyched. Turns out this kids name was Schultz ( I'm not sure if that was his actual name or his "bands" name or both) and he was also in the second band, which was some type of improvisational grind band, which like his first band was just as interesting as it was rediculous to watch. Third band was two kids from arizona with two synths and too many pedals for their own good. They played ambient experimental mood music, as I will call it. We set up, played our set, yada yada yada, show was over, cool. I'm really just excited to be in California for the first time, but it didn't really hit me that I had finall made it to California until we woke up today and drive through the redwood Forrest and its amazing display of trees older an larger than I can fathom. Things like this are VR to someone who has grown up and lived in new York city their entire life. Similar to the effect of the grand canyon, it was purely amazing.
At this time I would like to take a moment to introduce you to our driver, Shane, A.K.A. fat feather. Shane is an old friend of Sairas and offered to pick us up in Texas with backline and drive us on our tour, and I don't think we could have found Anyone better. Shane is a musician himself, mainly playing in noise bands, and like most good noise dudes, he has an awesome knowledge of equipment and sound, which has made the shows on this tour go extremely smooth. Our equipment set up can be a little hectic and being able to have him act as sort of our own personal sound dude is amazing and way more than we had asked for from him. Shane also happens to work for the largest importer of Tibetan crystal singing bowls in the U.S. so his knowledge of eastern religions, medicine and spirituality is also pretty impressive. Other interests of his I have learned, are cock pumps and sticking objects up his urethra. His duality is great.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

If we don't star playing some shitty shows, this blog is gonna start getting really boring. Fuck, Portland was awesome. Played 2 shows, first was at East End with atrocity exhibition, light house and deathcharge. The show was great, pretty mellow Sunday night but great none the less. Saira is originally from Portland so she has a ton of old friends there, it was nice to see a lot of people I'de met before through her as well as a lot of new people.
Saturday was the show I had been looking forward to the most, Lebenden totten, bellicose minds and Thrones. If your reading this blog and havnt heard these bands, then you are doing something wrong with your life. Not only was I excited about this show because all the bands are fucking amazing, but I felt like the mixture of genres Was, in a weird way, perfect. Not to sound cocky or anything but I sort of feel like if you mashed all three of those bands together, you might end up with rosenkopf, or at least I would like to think so. Every band obviously played amazing. It was Paige's last show with Lebenden totten so as a gift, they dumped bottles of glitter all over her. Naturally everybody in the room was covered in glitter by the time they finished and we ended up playing our set glowing green with sparkles.
As over hyped as Portland may be, it has continuously produced probably the largest output of amazing music over the past 30 years, so it was great to get to meet and play with some those bands, both older and newer. And as if we hadn't been blessed enough by the kindness of our Seattle host T.J. Cowgill, getting to stay with frank and Chanelle from Lebenden totten is always a pleasure. Their house feels like some sort of ancient Anarcho refuge, tucked away and hidden by bushes. Weird punk and Masonic relics decorate the whole place in a very honest way, different from most people with weird oddity collections who's houses seem to scream "I'm boring so I bought all this crap to make myself seem sophisticated". The best part is franks garage turned workplace/study. Going inside feels like your in some German war bunker where frank has been hiding, reading occult conspiracy books and doodling drawings of zombie punks, convinced that the bomb has dropped and waiting out the apocalypse. Maybe this fantasy isn't that far off from the truth...
On our way to eureka California to play a show that we have no predictions about. Sairas estranged father is coming to the show, which only adds to the unpredictability of tonight's show/vibe, but right now, Driving and listening to the apostles, everything seems to be in its place.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Played two killer shows in Seattle. Friday was part of a monthly party thrown by our good friend T.J. Cowgill (A.K.A. King Dude). It's more of a dance party, so We were the only band on the bill but they had David J of fucking BAUHAUS DJing. I don't think I need to explain how much of an influence Bauhaus has been for me musically, so it was amazing to be able to play for him, and he even liked it. He had really nice things to say after the show and asked to exchange contacts with us, which is extremely flattering.
Saturday we played at this place called the Morgue with King dude and Deathraid. It was a pretty mixed bill which was cool. People seemed a little more into us at the Friday show, but it was good vibes all around and had an amazing time at both.
In a way, it sort of feels like the tour is only really even starting now. We've been out for over a week, but with that'll the days off for the fest and the long drives out of the desert, things are only starting to fall into place now. Those three days of ten hour drives, 2 of them without any shows, were really starting to take a toll on us mentally. Seattle was definitely what we needed to get things back in place. Most people don't seem to think much of Seattle, and I guess I can understand why, but it is really a very interesting place. Such a high density of shameless weirdos with no pretension or self consciousness, VR. A total contrast from NYC which is filled with wanna be weirdos, too self involved to care about anything unless they were told to by a blog.
The real hero of this seattle trip though, was T.J. Not sure how to describe T.J. Other than by calling him the name that he already goes by, King Dude. He is a total gentleman and sweet heart and he lifted our spirits with his genuinity after a brutal couple days of driving, in which things got a little tense in the van.
I apologize if this entry seems a bit sappy, but we are riding to portland on a wave of good vibes right now.

P.S. we will be playing with king dude in NYC on July 5th at glasslands gallery. Please come out and support, as king dude will be leaving for a euro tour afterwards.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Played at I.C.Y.C in phoenix two nights ago with napalm raid, deras krig, no statik, and Forward. The show was cool, I.C.Y.C is a huge D.I.Y warehouse space run by a friend of ours named Wes who used to live in NY. It's definitely the type of place I'm excited to play on tour due to the lack of its kind in NY. Despite the awesome lineup of 5 touring bands, the show was pretty mellow, which was fine with me because I was beat. I even started nodding off during forwards two GISM covers they did. Am I a disgrace to the corpse of Randy Uchida?? We ended up crashing at a dude named Jes' house who said that his band marsh stepper might actually be playing at WIERD night soon. Everything is connected.
We're now leaving the grand canyon, where we took a day/night off to explore and camp out. This desert has been one of the most fascinating and cryptic places I have ever been. Something about it feels more spiritually charged than even my trips to Jerusalem. Century old structures have their aw-factor, but this desert/canyon is pure earth. The little knowledge i have of this regions native religions defenitely adds to all of this. I think I am in love with a cacti. Also on a side note, this concept of "mountain time" is blowing my mind. It's almost as if the higher you go, time moves backwards?? Pretty amazing
We are heading to Salt lake city/ Boise Idaho but im Not really sure which one because our SLC show at raunch records has been cancelled, so we don't really know what our plan is. If nothing pops up for us to play today, our next show will be in Seattle. Taking two days off like this and covering so much distance is a little hard on the funds, but we will figure it out. See you soon, west coast.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

El Paso last night was pretty awesome. Played with 3 local bands, unknown threat, communion of thieves and resin cum, as well as negative standards from oakland. El paso seems to be a Very small scene mainly of Hispanic kids into grind, crust and black metal. Even though these are not normally something I'm into, it was very refreshing to play this totally humble show after being at chaos on tejas, which at times can feel like some type of battle of the bands. Only about 25 kids at the show but they were super psyched to have an out of town band playing.
Things got a little intriguing for me when we found out that the dude who had set up the show was a member of the now infamous black metal band NYOGTHAEBLISZ. You may recognize the name from the controversy that was caused over them being on the bill at chaos in tejas, due to their association with the label Satanic Skin head Productions and the labels use of nazi imagery. From what i understand, the end result was NYOGTHAEBLISZ being removed from the fest do to both the mob and antisect refusing to play if they were not taken off. I know I'm touching on some pretty sensitive topics here, but I guess I was so entrieged by the fact that he had set up a show for us because whether or not they are a white power band (he and pretty much everybody els at the show was maxican), according to him they are a band about hate for all the human race ,and we in a way, are the opposite. I find it very exciting to be able to play our music this crowd and have them be entrieged by it and enjoy it. To me that is more powerfull than protesting them, getting them kicked off of a show, or refusing to play with them. This is what i mean when i say things can no longer be black and white, they must be yin and yang.The show was completely filled with positive vibes. everybody was psyched to be there and very hospitable to us, I sensed no hate.
On another note (or maybe it's all related), Venus goes into transit today which means that it will be passing through our view of the sun. Not exactly sure what this means on an astrological level, but from what I understand it is of great significance.

P.S. big thanks to negative standards for giving us their share of the door money, it was highly appreciated.

Photo is of communion of thieves. Thanks to franky for letting us crash